Salvation
by M.Avercroft
Summary: Life was never anything short of difficult, damned at the very least.  The experiences of the tragic Sif, in the perspective of their leader, Moses, who endlessly struggled for their salvation.
1. I Hope

Disclaimer: I own nothing, well certainly nothing substantial---

I. Hope

From the moment I awoke, from the very moment I began, I knew that something was wrong. It wasn't something I could find within my own form. Pale skin was near flawless and silken dark hair that lay unfettered over my face, shadow-less, never concealing my painfully green eyes. It wasn't logical, really it wasn't, even as I stared in wonder at my stainless hands, there was nothing to validate my claim. Still, this feeling it wasn't something brought on by the environment, though cruel, as it would later become. It was a prison, but somehow I had known. It was me that was wrong. Despite my newfound strength, and near imperceptible speed, it did little to reassure me. Life was simple in those days, far too simple. It gave a person; well it gave me, far too much time to think.

Day in, day out, the routine was the same. Fight. Learn. Fight again, throwing in the occasional feed when they wished. The reprieve from battle training was small however, just out of apparent necessity more than any real desire for education. I was taught to speak, read, and write in basic terms---useless as it was at the time. They never taught us what was important. Instead, what I learned was far simpler… to kill. I would kill, and I would survive, or so I was told. This was the only way. Wrong or not, survival was all that mattered. I did as commanded… I didn't really know any better.

It couldn't have been long, not in the scope of things, in my time there, before I became aware of _them_, all around me, breathing, existing beside me. Separate, but so identical. My kind, my kin, eyes the same as mine, but kept from each other. I didn't know their names, and I couldn't possibly imagine their faces, but always I felt them. I wonder now if our creators were afraid even then, that they kept us apart so diligently, or was that just a more effective training method? We never knew. Cold walls separated us from each other, how many of us there were at the time… I don't even know. My brothers and sisters---the Sif, as we were later called--- we were all alike, ideal killers, each of us. Obedient. Deadly. Perfected. Or so we thought. Even our creators were fooled…

The Thorn began. I never bore witness to it, not at the time, but the shock and horror it so rapidly rendered was no different than the plague it brings upon us now. We didn't have to see it to know. The whispered word of the guarded men in lab coats and the armored men in the training facility, all of it was enough. The cries that echoed into our own individual cells were enough. Flawed. Imperfect. We were dying, and one at a time this bizarre sickness began to kill. Never once did they seem to try and stop it. Never for a lesser creature as ourselves. Never once for their dolls. All the while each death poisoned my system. We feel it you know, when one of us falls… a sudden coldness within our blood. As time slipped by in its painful consistency, something inside of me changed---

As I sat alone in my tiny cell, something exploded, tearing me, screaming for some unknown salvation. This couldn't be all there was. We couldn't be something so disposable. How was it that we were used so? Everyday. Never ending. No questions and no truth. Why was it that we were shown no fate greater than this apparent death? The fight began than, just within me, infected every cell of my body with its desperate cry. Hope? What was it? What stopped us from seizing it before? My brothers, my sisters, my only kin…we had to fight. If it was only for a simple chance we had to try. Could things be any worse away from here than in this facility? We had to escape those steel cages, what we only knew as a doomed life. It seemed I was the first to speak up, but it shouldn't have meant anything. Not really.

I wasn't any kind of leader. But for some reason--- they listened to me…


	2. II Escape

II. Escape

The escape was no doubt a turning point in my life, in all our lives, but even as I embraced the lush green of the surrounding woodland, collapsing into its newfound arms, the luster of freedom began to fade. The fragile glimmer burning away to reveal a hint of harsh truth. Under our collapsed forms, exhausted thoroughly from running, the sweet dew of the grass below was laced with a distinct bitterness. A feeling that dimmed what we dreamed would be equivalent to satisfaction for our efforts, and softly melded into a growing unease at the progression of our lives. Escape was short lived. We, the Sif, as you call us, did indeed escape the clutches of our creators but left in question the ability to escape the nature of ourselves. No. We left bearing the truth, but were to desperate to swallow it whole.

They told us, when we threatened them. When I had a shaking hold upon the collar of a lead scientist, forcing him up against the wall, demanded answers. Needing explanations. There was a will in me, a mad fury almost, that took over me then, fueling a boldness I wasn't aware that I ever had. I don't know if I could ever recapture that strength, not after the reality of it all. I never seen a man look so positively annoyed as he did then, disgusted almost as though he was suffering of a disobedient pet, but still, he replied to out demands, showing a lack of emotion I never knew possible in another.

We were weapons, simple as that. And in accordance to popular belief, nothing else. Designed killers, manufactured for perfection. Disposable. Cheap. Utterly replaceable. Our deaths meant nothing in business and war. And the Thorn? A side effect of our creation, nothing to worry with. Our over-exerted bodies were not meant to last beyond a short time on the battlefield. It was the science's way of cleaning up the trash, dissipating what it no longer needed.

The explanation was almost more sickening than the thought of the illness itself, silently slaughtering us day by day. But I suppose that was the idea, wasn't it? When they created us. At the time, my whole body rebelled, refusing to accept the sick, smooth simplicity of the whole operation. Never before did I battle so strongly with an obscene urge to kill, taking only in mind our more important goals to hold me back. Frustrated and violent, I demanded another answer from the human in front of me. The Thorn couldn't be completely irreparable, they had just never taken the time, no the effort, to stop it.

A response was spit venomously into our faces. Blood was the only cure. The blood of a girl named Saya whom we were conceived from. Dropping the man to the ground, we rapidly took our leave, arming ourselves well from their stock, and fleeing from the facility. Other guards would follow soon to chase us, leaving us no time to waste as we ran as fast as our heels could take us. Into the hills, into the countryside searching for safe shelter.

It was thus that we arrived here, a ruins where we could hide ourselves from pursuers, and the ever-deadly sun that plagued us by day, here deep in the hills, away from direct roads and cities. We would have to venture from here by nightfall, hunting for the blood that sustained our normal appetite, murdering what was necessary to survive. All the while searching desperately for this one girl, whose blood may be the only way to save us from our plight.

Day in, day out, life moves like this for Sif, the damned children of man. We rise, we hunt, we kill, we flee. What escape have we really found for ourselves? Any at all? We lack cold bars to seal us apart, but inside we are trapped more than ever, murderers on the fringe of human society, neglected and desperate to live. Regardless of where this life will go, I will continue to lead them. We are all we have. Each other and only that, for we were born abandoned.

But still, I suppose I shouldn't dwell... Reflection is probably not the best option at this point, not when it still pulses within me, a fight in my blood. We have moved on,

for better or worse, in order to save ourselves, to pursue what we can only grasp as hope.

We will find and kill Saya. It is our only choice---


End file.
